


At A Loss

by parallelmonsoon



Series: Father Figure Verse [2]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, Violence, it doesn't hurt, non murder murder, non violent violence?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:20:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25004551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parallelmonsoon/pseuds/parallelmonsoon
Summary: Remus remembers(Or Deceit really should have thought this through a little better.  It turns out removing memories from the embodiment of intrusive thoughts doesn't work too well.)
Series: Father Figure Verse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810264
Comments: 18
Kudos: 104





	At A Loss

**Author's Note:**

> Companion to Father Figure. Set after the memory wipe and when Virgil left, but before the present time. 
> 
> Warning for Remus inflicting violence on Deceit, but Deceit is not actually harmed by it and does not feel pain from it.

Remus is used to thoughts that come lurching.

He pities his brother, sometimes. For Roman creativity is effort. Dragged up rough from his depths, and even then he insists on polishing it, spit-shining away the interesting wrinkles to leave it sleek. For Roman creativity is an act of **creation**. A birthing, as squalling and ugly as any other.

For Remus? He glances at a drinking glass and it all unspools. The shatter and the jagged shards and the **possibilities**. Creativity like a spear thrust, sunk deep into the throbbing meatspace of his brain. A wounding, something that happens **to** him, and he wouldn't have it any other way.

But this? This is new.

This thought doesn't batter down the door. Doesn't bubble up hot and swell taunt before bursting.

Instead it comes creeping. Padding gentle on little cat feet. Deceit is out in the commons; a rare occurrence. Remus looks at him in passing, and sees...

_A younger Deceit._ _**Smiling** _ _._

Remus cackles. Shakes it off and steals the book Deceit is reading. Sets it aflame and eats the ashes, relishing the burn. Because it, at least, makes sense.

Deceit smirks. He glowers. He does not smile, and if ever he did, surely it wouldn't be that soft, that sweet, a gentle curve that exposes that tip of a fang.

It lingers, though. Remus lives in flickers. Like a sewing needle chewing its way across a careless palm, and it costs him, to hold tight to much of anything. But this thought, this image...it stays. Makes itself cozy.

And slowly, slowly, it grows.

Another day, and they are playing their usual game. Remus pushes and prods at the wall that keeps him confined to the subconscious. Like a velociraptor testing the fences, and there it is, the **thrust**...

Remus bobs his head and gives a chortling call. The putrid scraps of meat between his teeth turn his drool into a sizzling miasma. He stalks crooked. A little less raptor with every step and a little more something **other**. His bones grate rough.

Deceit's door is never locked. Still Remus oozes underneath. Coalesces on the far side pallid and lashing. Cthulhu Rex, he thinks, and his laugh bubbles up and squirms from his throat.

He'd hoped, as he always does, that this would be the time he takes Deceit by surprise.

Deceit sets down the papers he's reading. Considers, and tucks them away in a drawer, out of the splash zone.

“Good evening, Remus.”

Remus tucks his front end low. Shimmies with his rear, claws digging trenches into the floor as he readies himself for the pounce.

...and there it is again. The same, but also **more**.

_Deceit smiling. Sprawled out in a chair instead of sitting rigid. Turned to one side, one leg draped over the arm and the other foot planted on the floor to steady himself._

Deceit doesn't wince when the teeth close on his shoulder. Barely blinks.

“You're no fun anymore,” Remus tells him later.

“I never was.” Deceit tidies the mess with a snap. “Now, what would you like for dinner?”

It's too open-ended a question. Remus judders in place, caught up in the whirlwind in his head. Spinning and spinning, and Remus goes round with it, circles himself, and his howl echoes the storm.

Six arms wind around him. Hold tight until Remus can find himself again.

“Apologizes,” Deceit says as he steps back. He taps his chin, thinking. “An ostrich egg filled with scorpions. Will that suffice?”

Remus grins and bounces off to set the table.

* * *

Roman would scoff, but there is a predictability to the thoughts that barge their way into Remus' ooey-gooey noggin.

He looks at a glass and thinks of the press of a shard against his palm. The way the skin would dimple. The resistance. The **breach**.

Or.

A different sort of cup. Heated and set against the taunt flesh of the back. The suction raising a bruise, a welt. Angry and blood-filled and gloriously sensitive.

Or.

The cup filled brimful. Pond muck, teeming thick with tiny life. The frantic slither kick of a tadpole on the way down.

Violence or sex or the grotesque. Never does Remus look at a glass and think of sun tea sweetened with honey and flavored with mint.

It makes no sense. It **bothers** Remus, when so very little does.

* * *

A month passes (or maybe a week, or maybe a year...time is not a friend to Remus.) The mental image keeps growing, both in scope and clarity.

_Deceit smiling. Sprawled out in a chair. Holding a thin, colorful book in one hand, and the cover looks like something a child might draw. Looks like something **Remus** might have drawn, once. Chunky people-shapes that ooze red. Deceit's mouth moves as he reads aloud. Remus can't hear it, but somehow he knows he's doing voices. One high and reedy, the other a low-down growl. _

Why something so...disgustingly **serene**?

And why **Deceit** , of all people?

He's fine as jailers go, Remus supposes. Patient, and sometimes Remus hates him for it. He lets Remus get away with murder. Sometimes even bleeds, because he knows that Remus likes it, but there's nothing that gets a real rise out of him.

He can't hurt Deceit. He understands Remus too well, and understanding robs him of his threat. Inside his prison Remus runs wild. No consequences, and how terrible is **that**?

But while Deceit knows Remus, Remus knows little of Deceit. He spends the bulk of his time working. Patrolling the low places of Thomas' mind, a glorified babysitter for the other-others that dwell there, the fragments and aspects and instincts. It leaves him exhausted and sluggish more often then that, but he still makes time for Remus. Still cooks and cleans and lets himself be hunted to soothe Remus' frustrations.

And on the bad days? The days when Remus can't find his edges. When it isn't a thrust but a tear, a rending that leaves him sundered.

Those are the days that Deceit hunts **him**.

He takes Remus apart so that he can piece himself back together. And in moment between destruction and reformation, there is a space. A quiet space, a space where Remus can simply **stop**. A space where he can rest.

Remus craves it. Deceit hates it.

It's the only thing that unsettles him. It leaves him quiet, after, and Deceit is too quiet as it is. And Remus has never understood. For all the shit Deceit takes from him, Remus would think he'd relish the chance to use his fangs.

Instead he hesitates. Every time.

* * *

The rest comes clear all in a rush one random night.

Not a thrust but a swell. Like the tide, and as it washes in Remus realizes it isn't a thought after all.

_~~Deceit~~ Janus smiling. Sprawled out in a chair. Reading aloud from a book with dismembered brothers on the cover. Doing voices, and the dark shape curled on his chest giggles at the rumble. Janus scritches between the hard plates of Virgil's carapace before extending his hand to the side. Beckons. _

A memory.

_Everything shifts as Remus crosses the room. Janus helps him clamber up into the chair. Remus scoops Virgil up, setting him in his own lap and leaning back against Janus's chest. Janus waits for them to settle and get comfortable before continuing the story, lowering the book so they can follow along with the delightfully gory pictures._

“Remus?” ~~Janus~~ Deceit asks from across the table. “Is something wrong?”

And now it's a flood, a deluge. A tsunami, and the raging waters are full of debris.

_Janus calming Virgil. Shifting to something thickly coiled, with a cobra's flare, so that Virgil could see there was nothing to fear. Proof that no monsters could get him, because Janus was the bigger nightmare by far._

_Janus showing Remus how to garden. Letting him twist the plants as he liked, but insisting he plant them with his hands first. Dirt and sun and worms. All of it imaginary, but somehow less so then if Remus had simply snapped them into place. And in the end Remus hadn't felt the need to change them, had been content with foxglove and lilies and oleander._

_Janus._

Memory after memory.

_Always Janus._

_Janus...and Virgil._

**His brother.** _Crawling into Remus' bed at night, snitching snacks from his plate, webbing him tight and leaving him to squirm..._

It's not the whole of it, Remus realizes. There's more that he's forgetting, he's sure of it. In most of the memories he feels very young, and Virgil is a tiny wee thing, clumsy on his legs and more eye then spider. He tries to focus, tries to force it, but there's just one more and it's hazy and it **hurts**.

_Janus kneeling in front of them both. Solemn, explaining to Remus that he can not, **must not,** go wandering again. Janus telling him he knew he hadn't meant to hurt Thomas, but Thomas wasn't ready, couldn't cope, and now Janus had to make him forget the things Remus had shown him. And he wanted the boys to watch him do it, so that they wouldn't go outside their bounds again. So that they would known what it cost. _

_Janus calling the memory to him. Taking it into himself, and showing Virgil and Remus how a patch of scales at his side had darkened and dulled. They would poison him, if he let them stay, and so he had to dig them loose. One by one, hooking his claws beneath and prying them up, and this wasn't like their games, this was...this was **real** , and the blood was real and the pain was real. This was Janus hurting himself to fix what Remus had broken, and for the first time in his life Remus wanted to look away from something. _

“Remus?” Deceit asks again, and he sounds concerned.

'You took them,' Remus realizes.

...but why?

Because Remus hadn't listened? He's sure that he hadn't, because he's him, after all, and he can never leave well enough alone. So many of those early memories seemed happy, but maybe Deceit had gotten tired of it.

Maybe he had gotten tired of **Remus**.

He was a lot, he knew. He **liked** that he was a lot. Liked that he took up more space then Roman ever could. He'd never felt ashamed of his own enormity before.

But.

Deceit had gotten rid of him. Had pried him loose like a dead-dark scale and thrown him away. Had decided that he was content to be his keeper, but no longer wanted to be...

'Hate you, papa', and Remus can hear it this time, his own child voice pitched in an imitation of Janus' faux-British snobbery.

“Remus?” Deceit pushes himself up and starts to come around the table. “Remus, wh-”

'Did you have to take Virgil too?' Remus thinks. But then...maybe Virgil had asked him too. Maybe he hadn't wanted Remus either.

Remus stands, and Deceit draws closer cautiously. He's frowning, tight lipped and worried, with not a hint of a fang to be seen.

“It's okay,” Deceit says, and it's the biggest lie he's told. “Do you need-?”

Deceit braces himself. Opens himself for whatever it is that Remus needs.

Remus walks away.


End file.
